Calling Dr. Cloward… Dr. Piven… Dr. Cloward…

“Could the flood of underage, would-be immigrants over the southern border be ‘Obama’s Katrina’ as Susan Page of USA Today warned?

“No, it’s worse. Even the most virulent George W. Bush denigrator would not suggest that the former president actually created the hurricane. This president, by contrast, bears a heavy responsibility for creating the deluge of unaccompanied minors who have recently crashed ashore. …

“The White House insists that the migrants are fleeing violence and poverty in their home countries. No doubt, but poverty and violence have (sadly) been features of those societies for decades.

“What happened? The precipitating event was Obama’s election year decision unilaterally to grant permanent resident status to the children of immigrants who have been living in the country illegally for a significant period of time and were brought here before the age of sixteen.

“Clearly, the president was thinking about how this would play with voters, especially Hispanics. ‘They are Americans in their heart, in their minds, in every single way but one: on paper,’ he said at the time, and this change (unlawful, but that’s another story) would make immigration policy ‘more fair, more efficient and more just.’

“There was another audience for the president’s words and deeds though. Rumors flew in Central America that children would no longer be deported from the U.S. There is now widespread talk of ‘permisos’ – documents the migrants believe they will be granted if they get across the Rio Grande. As The Economist reports, a leaked border agency memo described interviews with 230 women and children apprehended recently. Most reported that they came because they’d heard that they would be permitted to stay.” ―Mona Charen, When Government Tries to Be Nice

“Liberal elites talk down to the cash-strapped middle class about their illiberal anger over the current immigration crisis. But most sermonizers are hypocritical. Take Nancy Pelosi, former speaker of the House. She lectures about the need for near-instant amnesty for thousands streaming across the border. But Pelosi is a multimillionaire, and thus rich enough not to worry about the increased costs and higher taxes needed to offer instant social services to the new arrivals.

“Progressives and ethnic activists see in open borders extralegal ways to gain future constituents dependent on an ever-growing government, with instilled grudges against any who might not welcome their flouting of U.S. laws. … Likewise, the CEOs of Silicon Valley and Wall Street who want cheap labor from south of the border assume that their own offspring’s private academies will not be affected by thousands of undocumented immigrants, that their own neighborhoods will remain non-integrated, and that their own medical services and specialists’ waiting rooms will not be made available to the poor arrivals.

“Have immigration-reform advocates such as Mark Zuckerberg or Michael Bloomberg offered one of their mansions as a temporary shelter for needy Central American immigrants? Couldn’t Yale or Stanford welcome homeless immigrants into their now under-occupied summertime dorms? Why aren’t elite academies such as Sidwell Friends or the Menlo School offering their gymnasia as places of refuge for tens of thousands of school-age Central Americans?

“What a strange, selfish and callous alliance of rich corporate grandees, cynical left-wing politicians and ethnic chauvinists who have conspired to erode U.S. law for their own narrow interests, all the while smearing those who object as xenophobes, racists and nativists. How did such immoral special interests hijack U.S. immigration law and arbitrarily decide for 300 million Americans who earns entry into America, under what conditions, and from where?” ―Victor Davis Hanson, The Moral Crisis on Our Southern Border

“Why do they come? The administration pretends it’s because of violence and poverty.

“Nonsense. When has there not been violence and poverty in Central America? Yet this wave of children has doubled in size in the past two years and is projected to double again by October. The new variable is Obama’s unilateral (and lawless) June 2012 order essentially legalizing hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who came here as children.

“Message received in Central America. True, this executive order doesn’t apply to those who came after June 15, 2007. But the fact remains that children coming across now are overwhelmingly likely to stay.

“More nonsense. It’s a total non sequitur. Comprehensive reform would not have prevented the current influx. Indeed, any reform that amnesties 11 million illegal immigrants simply reinforces the message that if you come here illegally, eventually you will be allowed to stay.” ―Charles Krauthammer, The Immigration No-Brainer

“The American Dream is dying for tens of millions of unemployed, underemployed and long-term jobless citizens. But the White House has guaranteed that one sector of the U.S. economy will thrive for decades to come: Open-borders immigration lawyers.

“Don’t believe the fibbing D.C. flacks. While the president’s spokesman Josh Earnest promised that ‘most’ of the illegal immigrant youths from Central America flooding across our borders will ‘likely’ be deported, decades of reality expose the White House lie. Our deportation system is designed to fail. …

“As they clamor for mass illegal alien amnesty, left-wing immigration lawyers and ethnic activists operate a lucrative industry whose sole objective is to help illegal aliens and convicted criminal visa holders evade deportation for as long as possible. Groups such as the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, and the American Friends Service Committee make their livelihoods off administrative bottlenecks.

“Some of my friends on the right think the border crisis is some grand political scheme of Obama’s, that he in effect wants a border crisis. I think that’s wrong. Buffeted by scandals and the growing realization by large swaths of the public that he is out of his depth, the last thing he needed was this tragic spectacle on the border.

“But that doesn’t mean this isn’t a crisis of his making, triggered by his tendency to think politics first and policy second. In economic terms, he thought he could lower the price of a very valuable good – legal residence in the U.S. – without seeing any rise in the demand. These immigrants aren’t fools. They’re responding rationally to new information; if you make it past the border, you can stay. If you’re a kid, all you have to do is make it to the border.

“That’s why conservatives are wrong when they suggest more border guards will solve this crisis. The kids are turning themselves into the border guards. Adding more guards is like adding more staff to the reception desk at a hotel.” ―Jonah Goldberg, Obama Puts Politics First, Border Security Second

“The only thing that will end this surge is a series of iron-clad, immediate measures to secure the border and deport the illegals who are already here. Locking down the border is a dubious proposition at best – it would be difficult and expensive, and it’s a duty the Obama Administration in particular, and the Ruling Class in general, has no appetite for. …

“Meanwhile, the new arrivals will hear a loud segment of our Ruling Class sing their praises, calling young illegals by flattering names like ‘Dreamer’ and insisting they are, in many ways, superior to native-born young people. They’ll never be referred to as criminals; most major media organizations already refuse to refer to them as either ‘illegal’ or ‘alien,’ and the Obama Administration never uses either term.

“The Big Business side of the amnesty caucus will keep cranking out white papers purporting to demonstrate that illegal immigrants are a net plus to the U.S. economy (in which case, why wouldn’t we want as many of them as we can get?). There won’t be any massive deportations. There will be rallies and protest marches calling for a pathway to citizenship, so these noble refugees can stop ‘living in the shadows.’ They’ll hear some more warm talk about how crossing the border illegally with your children is an ‘act of love’ (Jeb Bush) or how undocumented aliens are ‘already American citizens’ (Joe Biden).

“So please, spare me the White House talking-point nonsense about how the surge of ‘migrants’ (evidently the new term of media art for them) was mistaken to come here, because they didn’t read Paragraph 37(c) of Obama’s latest executive order. They’re here because they have friends and relatives who were already here, and told them to come. They’re here because they got a fairly accurate picture of what the American Ruling Class has been saying about immigration reform, over the hapless protests of their largely ignored electorate. They’re here because they were invited.” ―John Hayward, White House Admits Its Role in Child-Immigrant Chaos

“Immigration laws are the only laws that are discussed almost entirely in terms of what can be done to help those who have broken the law. Some want to help a little and some want to help a lot. But amnesty lite is still amnesty.

“Some people seem to think that amnesty is not amnesty if you throw in requirements for citizenship. Amnesty is not some esoteric concept. It means that you are not going to be punished for breaking the law – and that simply brings laws into contempt. Denying citizenship is not a punishment because crossing the border illegally does not entitle you to citizenship. Providing a legal status short of citizenship is not punishment either.

“There is no requirement for either amnesty or for citizenship that President Obama cannot ignore or dilute unilaterally, as he has ignored or diluted existing immigration laws, as well as other laws. Barack Obama is the biggest reason to pass no immigration ‘reform’ laws until after he is gone.

“It doesn’t matter what immigration policies you believe in if you don’t control your borders – and the vast numbers of minors flooding across our borders today show that the Obama administration has no intention of controlling the borders. They are more concerned with controlling the border guards and ordering them not to take pictures that show the public what is happening.” ―Thomas Sowell, Amnesty Lite Is Still Amnesty

“Naturally, President Obama blamed Republicans for the crisis. At a press conference Wednesday night he insisted their opposition to his $3.8 billion spending request – along with their failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform – is facilitating it. ‘Are folks more interested in politics or are they more interested in solving the problem?’ Obama said he asked Texas governor Rick Perry. ‘If they are interested in solving the problem then this can be solved. If the preference is for politics then it won’t be solved.’

“Obama’s idea of solving the problem is to wait until Congress passes the appropriations bill before he will do anything about sealing the border – if at all. Hot Air’s Noah Rothman cuts through such transparent disingenuousness, explaining that in an emergency, ‘the executive branch does not wait for Congress to pass funding before it acts. It is beyond insulting to suggest that emergency supplemental funding is a precondition for a response to an emergency,’ he writes.

“It is even worse than that when one recalls Obama telling Americans in January that he has a pen and a phone, ‘And I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions.’” ―Arnold Ahlert, The Obama Administration’s Human Trafficking